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September 19, 2013

How software-defined infrastructure shapes compute resources"If you're running a data center today, you're big enough for a software-defined data center," said Poulin, who will speak on SDDCs at the Data Center World Fall 2013 conference in Florida. "If you have one rack or a small closet, you're more likely looking for a way to not run a data center anymore, and outsourcing is attractive." But software-defined infrastructure is in its infancy, and will likely evolve much like virtualization once did.

Security Researchers Create Undetectable Hardware Trojans
Hardware trojans have been the subject of considerable research since at least 2005 when the U.S. Department of Defense publicly expressed concerns over the military's reliance on integrated circuits manufactured abroad, Paar said. Often, the individual circuit blocks in a single microchip are designed by different parties, manufactured by an offshore foundry, packaged by a separate company and distributed by yet another vendor.

Microsoft Security Development Lifecycle Adoption: Why and How
Not only is the SDL integrated into a company’s internal development lifecycle, but it should also be applied to all software applications that are used by the company, no matter the development source. The SDL is a framework for the entire development process. Companies should require the use of an SDL which meets or exceeds the guidance in ISO/IEC 27034-1.

Understanding Samsung Knox
The Knox container feature is a second, secure Android environment within the normal operating system. The secure sub-operating system has its own separate home screen, launcher, applications and widgets. All the data and applications stored in the container are completely isolated from the rest of the operating system. No application or process inside the container can interact or communicate with any process outside of it and vice-versa.

Hey, CIOs: In a BYOD world, your new job is service provider
According to Matthew Finnie, CTO of Interoute, ”The idea that people are going to give up the freedom they have with the smartphone — I think that battle is completely lost.” Instead of “retrenching,” though, CIOs need to “define what’s useful and what’s critical for [them] to control.” He agreed with Short: The new role of the CIO is “almost like a mini service provider.”

Cybersecurity Field Not Ready to be Professionalized, Study Finds
“One of the things that gave us pause was that when an occupation professionalizes, it erects barriers to entry,” said Dr. Ronald Sanders, a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton and one of eight members of the committee producing the report. “On one hand, it improves the quality of people who enter the profession, but it also discourages some people from entering the field. At a time when the field is evolving and supply has not kept pace with demand, to professionalize the entire field would likely be counterproductive.”

Improving the Big Data Toolkit
Hadoop 2.0, said Merv Adrian, an analyst at Gartner, is “an important step,” making the technology “a far more versatile data operating environment.” The new version of Hadoop, he said, can handle larger data sets faster than its predecessor and it opens the door to analyzing data in real-time streams. So far, Hadoop has been used mostly to divvy up huge sets of data for analysis, but only in batches, not streams. The new Hadoop has also been tweaked to work more easily with traditional database tools, like SQL.

7 Biggest IT Compliance Headaches and How CIOs Can Cure Them
As if IT departments didn't have enough to worry about these days. They also have to ensure that the organization is in compliance with various industry and federal regulations (PCI, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA) designed to keep sensitive customer data safe. An increasingly difficult task in today's decentralized, mobile, app-filled world. It's enough to give a CIO or CTO a headache.

Meditate for More Profitable Decisions
Meditation has become an increasingly popular practice amongst the C-suite elite. And, with CEOs such as Rupert Murdoch (News Corp); Bill Ford (Ford Motor Company); Rick Goings (Tupperware); and Marc Benioff (Salesforce.com) all touting its benefits, executive coaches are picking up on the trend introducing mindful techniques to programmes to calm the mind’s “chatter”, assist focus and manage stress.

Agile exploratory software testing: Why IT inefficiency pays off
Exploratory testing involves the admin fully and continuously in the development process. Testers don't just react to massive chunks of developer code; they act proactively to think of ways to break it. The most daring extension of the Agile exploratory testing approach is to the Agile side of operational app testing: Agile exploratory DevOps. The administrator fights fires and actively thinks of ways to break the code before problems happen. It requires "operational sandboxes" in which to test.

Quote for the day:"Perfection isn't attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence" -- Vince Lombardi